Consumer adoption of mobile devices, such as cellular telephones, laptop computers, pagers, personal digital assistants, and the like, is increasing. These devices can be used for a diversity of purposes ranging from basic communications, to conducting business transactions, to managing entertainment media, as well as a host of other tasks. Additional enhancements, such as location-awareness features, e.g., global positioning system (GPS) tracking, also enable mobile device users to monitor their position and present their location via a local display.
To facilitate this increasing range of features and services, a variety radio access technologies (RAT) have emerged that are capable of supporting the growing quality of service (QoS) requirements associated with these features and services. For instance, various mobile communication standards have been introduced, such as first generation (1G) technologies (e.g., advanced mobile phone system (AMPS), cellular digital packet data (CDPD), etc.), second generation (2G) technologies (e.g., global system for mobile communications (GSM), interim standard 95 (IS-95), etc.), third generation (3G) technologies (e.g., code division multiple access 2000 (CDMA2000), general packet radio service (GPRS), universal mobile telecommunications system (UMTS), etc.), and beyond 3G technologies (e.g., third generation partnership project (3GPP) long term evolution (3GPP LTE), 3GPP2 universal mobile broadband (3GPP2 UMB), etc.).
Complementing the evolution in mobile communication standards adoption, other RATs have also been developed by various professional bodies, such as the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), for the support of various applications, services, and deployment scenarios. For example, the IEEE 802.11 standard, also known as wireless fidelity (WiFi), has been introduced for wireless local area networking, while the IEEE 802.16 standard, also known as worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX), has been introduced for the provision of wireless communications on point-to-point links, as well as for full mobile access over longer distances. Other examples include Bluetooth, ultra-wideband (UWB), the IEEE 802.22 standard, etc.
Despite a similar goal to provide consumers with ubiquitous connectivity, RATs have traditionally been incompatible with one another. Namely, RAT incompatibilities have extended between differing standardization organizations, as well as occurred within like standardization organizations. For instance, RAT standards like UMTS, HRPD, and WiMAX, respectively developed by the 3GPP, the 3GPP2, and the IEEE organizations, are incompatible. Other RAT standards like GSM and UMTS, both developed by the 3GPP, are incompatible. Still further, some 3GPP2 standards, such as the CDMA2000 standard one times radio transmission technology (CDMA2000 1×RTT) and HRPD, are also incompatible. As such, trends in RAT migration and business mergers have resulted in service providers (or carriers) not only supporting various radio access networks (RAN), but also implementing more than one incompatible RAT on these RANs. Although multi-RAT (or multi-mode) devices have been developed to enable application services to be accessed using various RATs, these devices have not improved the utilization of or balance between network resources, such as the radio spectrum of a RAN infrastructure.
Therefore, there is a need for an approach that provides load-balancing across multiple access networks.